The wandering journey brought Ervin to London for the Olympics, to race the 50-meter freestyle. In Friday's final, he swam well and finished fifth in 21.78 seconds. A medal would have been a surprise, but not as big a surprise as Ervin's presence in an Olympic pool in 2012.

It's a book, but here's the synopsis: Ervin, a 19-year-old Cal swimmer, went to the Olympics in Sydney in 2000 and won the gold medal in the 50 free, in a dead heat (21.98) with Gary Hall. Ervin also won a relay silver. The next year, he won world titles in the 50 and 100 frees, then dropped out - of swimming and mainstream life.

He played guitar in rock bands, grew dreadlocks, tattooed his arms and sank into a haze of pot, booze and treating women as "objects to destroy at will."

Ervin had one suicide attempt and one high-speed chase with the cops, in Berkeley, which ended with his motorcycle crashed into a Mustang and his shoulder separated. He sold his gold medal to raise money for Indian Ocean tsunami victims and lost his silver.

He worked in tattoo parlors and record shops, and after trying to end it all by gobbling tranquilizers, "I woke up the next morning only to find I had failed to even kill myself. At that point, I had a moment-with-God-type thing. I was reborn, in a way."

Through a connection with Hall, Ervin began giving swim lessons to kids in New York, just for the money, and in 2007 he re-enrolled at Cal, clean and sober, feeling, he said, like a moth emerging from the cocoon and flying to the light.

"My real bane was smoking pot and cigarettes," he told Rolling Stone magazine. "It's really been my kryptonite. Once I got away from it, my body just resurged and kind of flourished. It's like deja vu. Except where once I was green, vain and ambitious, now I'm just grateful to be alive and bring joy to those I care about."

Ervin - whose father is African American-American Indian and whose mother is Jewish - watched Cal's men swimmers win a national title and got inspired. He joined a few workouts, for fun, and found he still had some of the old speed. With the help of Cal coaches Teri McKeever and David Durden, Ervin rejoined the swim world, but with a different worldview.

"I'm not saving a life or detonating the sun," he said. "I'm just swimming one lap. It's a stunt, a well-performed acrobatic. And yet a lot of value is imposed on that. I believe that all things are done through the will of the gods. I don't believe I'm in charge of my destiny; forces are acting through me."

Ervin swims like a swimmer, but he doesn't talk like one.

"Not to be pedantic," he said as he left the pool Friday, "but it's like the ending to a body of Shakespeare's work. As with Prospero, who kind of had his redemption and was returning to where he came from, so did I feel like my being here is my own form of redemption."